On Heidegger’s relevance for a
phenomenologically oriented music Didaktik:
the unheard
Frederik Pio
ABSTRACT
This article investigates Heidegger’s relevance for a phenomenologically orien- ted music Didaktik. To do this, it considers Heidegger’s ontological approach in terms of its partial difference from the Husserlian approach to music Didaktik as presented by Professor Frede V. Nielsen. It then incorporates Heidegger’s ontological approach into a music pedagogical setting by means of a fourfold systematic approach, which is elaborated to capture four different levels of musical experience (designated as ‘the audible quadruple’). This systema- tic approach is further generalised to indicate a structure of four distinct approaches, in which the music subject can be encountered as such. Thus, the above-mentioned ‘audible quadruple’ is developed into a didactical grid of ori- entation. Since this grid contains four different Bildung positions in connection with four different fundamental views on music as a subject, it is, in general, designated as a ‘process model of Musicality-Bildung’. This model is developed as an analytical way to concretise Heidegger’s ontological turn within music education, as an approach distinct from – and yet familiar with – a number of other well-known music pedagogical conceptions. Thus, the article demon- strates how a Heideggerian approach of music pedagogy comes into contact with existing paradigms and yet also uncovers a potentially forgotten space of significance. This analysis expounds Heidegger partly in contra-distinction to Nielsen’s Husserlian approach. But still, the article draws heavily on Nielsen’s clarification of a number of didactical paradigms. In this way, the article’s reading of the ‘audible quadruple’ provides an interpretation of the musical process of experience buttressing Nielsen’s music pedagogical philosophy and his didactical position. This interpretation points beyond Nielsen’s own position whilst confirming Nielsen’s phenomenological readings and central interpretive categories (cf. Pio, 2014).
Keywords: Phenomenology, Frede V. Nielsen, Bildung, The unheard.
Introduction
I wish to thank the Nordic Network for this invitation to keynote on knowledge for- mation in music. And I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Royal College of Music here in Stockholm for their hospitality and for hosting this wonderful 19th annual conference.
The title of the conference, Knowledge Formation in Music, contains a challenge to think from music – not on music, where we approach music from the outside.
Knowledge formation “in music” seems to imply an inside. I will take my point of departure in phenomenology in order to present some ideas for how this type of knowledge formation could be developed.
I would first like to clarify some key concepts from phenomenology.
Ontology
I. The tree
For Heidegger, phenomenology is radicalised as ‘ontology’. To clarify what ontology is, Heidegger distinguishes between ‘the ontic’ and ‘ontology’.
Ontology is about what the world is as such, before our specific (ontic) ways of knowing it take effect. The ontological world is given in a fundamental and basic sense, before our cognitive apparatus begins to arrange and organise categorial perspectives on the world.
The ontic, on the other hand, marks the epistemological approach. We call forth the ontic when we apply intellectual theories and construct specific perspectives on the world.
To clarify this concept of ontology, Heidegger uses the example of a tree:
“In the relation to one another – before each other (voreinander gestellt) … we find the tree and us. But this notion (Vorstellen) … is not about a ‘pre- sentation’ (Vorstellung) deposited in our brain … / Because we have leaped
… and to where have we leaped? … to the earth on which we live and die …
” (Heidegger, 1954: 16–17).
This citation is an attempt to present an ontological alternative that can serve as a theoretical supplement to widespread epistemological approaches. In the episte- mological approach, the ‘reality’ of the tree is a result of a consciousness that creates
a mental picture in the brain that re-presents the tree. As a mental representation, the impression of the tree is an ontic feature. Its cognitive reality is constructed in the brain and it is thus segregated from the ontological world.
However, according to Heidegger, such an approach should be differentiated from the ontological dimension. The inherent solidarity between a human being and the world (as a being-in-the-world) cannot manifest itself within an approach employing inner, mental representations (subject) of an outer world (object) (Heidegger, 1957:
20).1
Instead, Heidegger investigates a different way to recognise the world and our- selves in it. We have to engage in what Heidegger calls a disclosure (Entbergung) of the phenomenon in its un-hidden presence (Unverborgenheit). This is the ontological emulation of what Husserl originally called ‘reduction’ (Heidegger 1967: 190). For Heidegger, phenomenology is about ontology; namely, about uncovering the being- ness (das Seiende) of the phenomenon in its being (Sein). Thus Heidegger frames the question of being as a phenomenological enterprise (cf. Heidegger, 1927: § 7c). We have to recover the phenomenon by encountering it – in the fullest sense of the word – in the world. (This is where hermeneutics flow together with phenomenology in section 31–33 in Being and Time.)
An ontological way to be in the world is not primarily the result of a cognitive, intellectual performance. The point of departure here is rather a pre-reflexive, dwel- ling presence in the world (Heidegger 1957: 208). Before any mental picture can be developed, we are always-already in the world. And this being in the world is the point of departure for any thought.
In this way, the phenomenon is not only given in our mental consciousness as an inner conceptualised picture; it is given in the world in an ontological way. Frede V.
Nielsens thus writes:
1 Our technical-scientific world picture as it comes forward as, for instance, cognitivism, cyberne- tics and system-theory (which, for Heidegger, is the current expression of metaphysics) claims that the world is primarily brought about through the way our brain processes sensual stimulation: “According to the teachings (Lehre) of metaphysics … the human being is the representing (vorstellende) animal … “ (Heidegger, 1954: 27–28). With this, the world is potentially reduced to a derived effect of how science currently assumes the brain is functioning. Heidegger returns here to the example of the tree: “ … suddenly everything is abandoned as soon as the science of physics, physiology and psychology … summoning all its evidence and proof, explains that we are actually not seeing a tree. In reality we see an emptyness, in which electrical chargings are scattered, whistling around with great velocity” (op. cit. 27–28). Here the tree as ontological phenomenon in the world is dissolved into a neurophysiological survey of electrical charging’s in the brain. For Heidegger, this is a symptom of the amnesia of science. The horizon of research here obliterates the fact that it is always-already rooted into a world as a point of departure that cannot be objectivised. Science cannot objectivise the background understanding of the world (being), which makes it possible for science to constitute its field of objects (Heidegger, 1967: 305). Thus it falls to philosophy to disclose the phenomena of the world.
” … there is a world of reality (virkelighedsverden) to recognize which is exterior to the recognition itself … “ (Nielsen, 2012b: 25–26).
In several places, Frede V. Nielsen discusses our human Befindlichkeit as attuned to the musical work as a multi-dimensional universe of meaning (Nielsen, 2012).
Befindlichkeit is precisely Heidegger’s notion for the attuned way in which human beings inhabit their world.
So, with this ontological turn, it becomes evident that the (above mentioned) tree is there in front of me, that the tree is in the field, that the field spreads over the earth, and that the earth is covered by the meadow. And all of this is there in a totality really close and present. The banality of this is indeed frightening.2 But the wisdom of phenomenology lies in the claim that the world is awake in us before we initiate any intellectual attempt to arrange it into a specific order. Heidegger asks:
“Does the tree stand in the ‘consciousness’, or does it stand on the meadow?
Does the experienced meadow lie in the soul or does it lie stretched out on the earth? Is the earth in our brain? Or are we standing on the earth?”
(Heidegger, 1954: 17).
II. La Mer
But where in the literature of music philosophy do we encounter this movement from representational thinking (cognitivism) towards an ontological disclosure (pheno- menology)? One example is Mikel Dufrenne’s analysis of aesthetic experience. In the passage below Dufrenne speaks about the orchestral piece La Mer by Claude Debussy. Dufrenne’s reading of this piece is an attempt to uncover this music as an experience of truth:
... when I listen to Debussy’s La Mer, the simple word itself … is … poetically charged. It orients me toward a certain affective quality. But I do not have to develop the images of glaucous water, waves, foam on the reefs, or noon at sea with its diamantine reflections. It is a symphony I hear, and not a real landscape which I contemplate ... Something like the essence of the sea is
2 But still the risk endures that the phenomenon of the tree is reduced to an object in a scientific survey (for instance, as brain activity represented graphically as colour codes on a screen) where a measurable, evident correctness is produced (Heidegger, 1954: 17). Thus in a technical-scientific procedure (of bioche- mistry and neurophysiology), the phenomenological essence of the tree is dissolved (op. cit. 18).
revealed to me, with respect to which every image is gross and vain. We are concerned with what I experience when I am before the sea, of what there is the truly ‘marine’ in it – with its affective essence, which is more certain and more communicable that all empirical signals. It is the sea-as-world, just as the fugue by Bach was joy-as-world (Dufrenne, 1973: 520, cursive fp).
In its sensual substance, La Mer communicates itself directly as the sea. It is not constructed in a brain (as a cognitive representation) but is rather “revealed” in its essence. Thus, there is no correct correspondence between the musical work and the listener. The musical work is disclosed as world. Here we are beyond the metaphysical (dualist) idea of the musical work as a representation (of a certain reality in the real world, for instance).
In stead something else happens in Dufrenne’s disclosure of it: This artwork (La Mer) draws us into a sensitivity towards the question of what we are. According to Heiddeger, we have no essence. In stead we are existence. We are constituted through an existential openness to the world. This concerns our very intimate familiarity with the world and the basic structures of our being in it. The poetical intensity of music has the potential to adress our deepest structures of experience. In other words:
What is it in this piece of music (La Mer) by Debussy that calls forth the being of the sea? What kind of horizon allows waves to be just waves? What is it that allows the ever-changing tide of ebb and flow to have its cycle? What is it that allows the surf to wash over the seashore?
This music is not a representation. It is rather a poetical vortex (in German, ein Wirbel). The listener is pulled into an openness, which Heidegger describes:
… as the artwork itself is pulled into an openness opened by the work itself, at the same time we are simply pulled into this opennes, and that means out of the ordinary. To follow this jerk (Verrückung) means: to transform our routine relations to world and earth … with a view to dwell in the occuring truth of the work (Heidegger, 1950: 54).
This leaves us with a primary experience that the being of music is involved in our own being, which gives rise to the following questions:
(i) If Heidegger’s ontological analysis of such un-hiddenness (Unverborgenheit) in relation to art has any merit; how can one understand the phenomenon of music in a such disclosure? And
(ii) what consequences could be drawn from this in relation to music teaching?
III. World / Earth
To answer these two questions, we have to start by clarifying the music-directed consequences we need to draw from the distinction between ontology and the ontic (cf. above). To do this I have selected two conceptual pairs – ‘World / Earth’ and
‘Reticence / Conquest’ –, which I will now outline briefly.
Heidegger’s ontology is played out in his description of the artwork. When the artwork works, it is constituted by two dimensions called world and earth (mentioned in the previous citation).
‘World’ is the technical-material-textual surface of the artwork, and ‘earth’ is the inner dimension characterised by a potential withdrawal, where the world of the work withholds itself. It is in the tension between the world and earth of the artwork that its being is manifested:
“Truth puts itself into work. Truth occurs only as the strife between the clearing and the hiddenness in the reciprocal conflictuality between world and earth. Truth is brought about in the artwork as this strife between world and earth” (Heidegger, 1950: 50).
This distinction between world and earth is decisive for Heidegger’s critique of the aesthetic appreciation of art. It is therefore only in a derived sense that the artwork can be described as an aestehtical object (of beauty). In a deeper sense, the value of art is tied to the event of its realisation as truth. This implies that music can be encountered in its world-dimension (for example, as an aesthetic object) but that it can also be disclosed in its earth-dimension, as an ontologically rooted phenomenon.
IV. Reticence – Conquest
I will now consider the relation between conquest and reticence as two modes common to all mankind. A being-in-the world can be marked by (i) a dwelling, restrained reticence or (ii) by a controlling mode of conquest.
Reticence: This relates to the idea that it is unnecessary to understand and order all music into familiar categories. Non-understanding and even estrangement are potentially legitimate forms of Bildung experience. In this way, strange or new music calls us into a mode of reticence. In our inherent will to order, we are sent back to the start. There is an elementary pedagogical value at stake here. We have to set aside our ego and make way for a musical phenomenon we do not yet fully understand. Our reticence here marks the earth dimension of the artwork. Here music is encountered as a Bildung subject.
Conquest: In contrast to ‘reticence’, we also have to face ‘conquest’ (cf. Løgstrup, 1984: 48f).Reticence and conquest belong together in the most intimate way as dichotomised differences.
Conquest is about experiencing music in a way in which it can be rationally determi- ned and defined. The conquest marks the presence of the subject in its domesticating, dominating and knowing way of inhabiting its world. Here we encounter music as a knowledge subject or as a “method”-subject (of practical skills).
Reticence differs from conquest. Reticence is about upholding a certain power- lessness that, in its own dwelling way, still remains forceful. In her analysis of Heidegger, Hanna Arendt describes this as a ‘non-wiling will’ (Arendt, 1971: 172ff.). This relates to a dwelling presence in the world. There is a part of the German Bildung tradition that has developed this (Th. Ballauf). However, as modern human subjects, we tend to become meaningfull to ourselves as we enter into a mode of control by dominating the surrounding world (as object).
In our sheer sensation of the musical phenomenon, we are, however, brought into reticence. Our will to be in control and install order is temporarily suspended for a while. This experience is valuable. In our reticence, we are reminded about of the world as the source into which we are delivered.
I believe it is insightful to appeal to the concepts of conquest and reticence here because, (a) in Heidegger’s Hölderlin-reading, we find the conceptual pair Herrschaft (Herausforderung) / Zurückhaltung (Heidegger, 1944: 177–178). This distinction has an affinity with Heidegger’s notions of world and earth as dimensions in the artwork.
As such, music as a subject is caught in the tension between:
(i) EARTH: sensuality (reticence: non-discursive, imaginative dimension) =>
dwelling
(ii) WORLD: understanding (conquest: intellectual dimension, explicated theory) => competence
These opposites both repel each other and belong together. So a strife is maintained – what Heidegger calls a Widerstreit – between something joining and something dividing – a Streitgesetz (Heidegger, 1983: 26), a conflictual magnetism.3
3 The Danish philosopher Knud Eiler Løgstrup – who wrote extensively on art – came into contact several times with Heidegger and the environment around him. Thus one finds a similarity between Løgstrup’s concept of reticence (tilbageholdenhed) and Heidegger’s notion of die Verhaltenheit (over against Haltung) which resembles reticence in connection with Heidegger’s theme of Gelassenheit (Heidegger, 1983: 64). So there seems to be a link here between Løgstrup and Heidegger – a link however that leads back to Hölderlin.
Heidegger’s notion of a magnetic strife between world and earth draws heavily on Hölderlin (Heidegger 1944: 36, 46). In relation to Hölderlin’s concept of Innigkeit, Løgstrup further seems to have been inspired
Let us now explore the ways in which we can utilise the distinctions world/earth and conquest/reticence.
The ‘audible quadruple’
In his work General Music Didactics, Frede V. Nielsen uses Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a point of departure to describe music as a multidimensional universe of meaning. However, by appealing to Heidegger, it is possible to develop this theory in a way that modifies its original approach. This relates to the possibility of problematising musical experience in relation to the theme of phenomenological ontology developed above. To arrive at an interim conclusion, let us first frame our question using the figure ‘the audible quadruple’:
Fig. 1. The audible quadruple
by the concept of ‘united opposites’ (forenende modsætninger) (Løgstrup 1997: 183–188). These significant links here deserve elaboration in a separate analysis.
Note that ‘world’ and ‘earth’ occupy opposite ends of the vertical axis and that
‘reticence’ and ‘conquest’ occupy opposite ends of the horizontal axis.
I. Why four different audibles?
This diagram shows four different audibles (in Danish, ‘hørbarheder’): a, b, c and d.
In Heidegger’s German, Hören is Gehören. This means that ‘to listen’ is about ‘belon- ging’ (somewhere). We are unable to listen away from the things. Our listening pulls us into the world. As sound pulls us into the world, music reminds us of the life-world in which we exist. We are fundamentally beings who listen. We are torn between the soundtracks of a lived world as we mirror ourselves in music. We are such listening beings because Hören is Gehören.4
Our hearing is therefore connected to the way in which we inhabit our world.
Without our hearing, we cannot be in the world. If our ability to hear is lost or impaired, we lose not only our hearing ability but also an important part of our relation to things and human beings in our surrounding world. A loss of hearing also threatens the way in which we are generally attuned to our world.
In a musical context, this implies that our aural way of being present in the world (as hearing beings) is more fundamental than playing music. In relation to music, from early childhood and onwards, we begin as listeners (our natality is aural in nature).
We are constituted into the world – in our Befindlichkeit – as listeners. These early, immediate experiences of music as listeners condition the possibility that, one day, we may pick up an instrument and start playing. The way we experience a sonorous world and filter all the sounds and harmony will ultimately influence a subsequent wish to play and practise music. For this reason, we refer to four ‘audibles’ (and not to four ‘play-abilities’).
So, ontologically, listening comes before playing. Especially when we are interested in general education and processes of musical formation and the Bildung of human beings, listening becomes an essential phenomenon. In a didactical sense, the funda- mental importance of listening is obvious. In music teaching, listening can be described as a goal, as an instrument (to achieve a goal), as teaching content, or as a method.
In this way, listening as a category is also linked to the theme of the justification of music as a subject in school. According to Kaiser & Nolte, listening is:
4 Heidegger himself differentiates what can be heard: “What if the hearable (die Hörigkeit) is neither the only nor the actual way of hearing … ?” (Heidegger, 1957: 203).
”Now we will heed the insight that we only indeed hear a claim (Anspruch) when we are consistent with (entsprechen) that which actually presents itself (zuspricht)” (op. cit. 203). It is this aspect of Heidegger which this article will attempt to elaborate.
” … not an anonymous technique, but always an activity of a subject with a particular life-history. And this life-history comes into contact with the music in the process of its assimilation” (Kaiser & Nolte 1989: 59).
This theme becomes even more relevant because, in Scandinavia today, there are many initiatives and projects (including school concerts) to bring the art-musical field of musicians in contact with the world of schooling. This is accompanied by strong poli- tical support for precisely this kind of development. In fact, in Denmark, it is written directly into the Government Act on Elementary School (the Folkeskoleloven) from 2014 (Antorini, 2013: 8–9). Finn Holst from our Nordic Network has among others conducted interesting research on this in his doctoral dissertation (Holst 2013). The challenge is to continually remind ourselves of the importance of initiating and recre- ating a listening process of musical experience in the pupil. Such a Bildung-oriented cultivation of dimensions of listening will provide an important background to the instrumental practice of music.
II. The four audibles (fig. 1):
(a) The hearable
On the hearable level, we encounter the technical-material surface of the music, which pulls it towards a reservoir of factual knowlegde. This is the level of raw matter. This is about a physiological excitation of the senses as a reaction to acoustic stimulation. It is an exchange of sensual reaction to a sonorous mathematics. At this level, the musical work is not present in an aesthetic sense. The material, accoustical base merely acts as a necessary foundation for the musical-aesthetic superstructure. It is only when the acoustic matter is overshaddowed by a musical manifestation that the artistic work or the musical phenomenon emerges.5
(b) The heard
The heard level concerns the transition from quantifiable acoustic stimulation to mental perception. On this level, music is an emotional medium; in other words, music is determined as an object which facilitates the experience of individual, psychological
5 Nicolai Hartmann originally introduced the three layers of the artwork (foreground, middle ground and background). This structure decides the aesthetic object by making a distinction between the ‘foreground’
of the work (the material support) on which the actual aesthetic shaping of the work (as superstructure) rests. Cf. Gadamer, 1983: 87 & Alt 1968: 86, 112–116.
emotions. Music is relevant and intense to the extent that it corresponds to our private, subjective feelings. This audible dimension is realised when we feel that we can project our emotions onto music, or when we feel that music is butressing or supporting our internal feelings.
(c) The over-heard
On the over-heard level, music is constituted as an aesthetic object; namely, an object that a subject can observe. At this stage, the technical-material dimension of the music we saw in dimension (a) is transformed into the manifestation of an aesthetic object.
Thus a more complex, artistic significance starts to emerge as aesthetic intensisites transgress the borders of language and discursive logic.
(d) The unheard
The level of the unheard is connected to the phenomenological notion of being-in- the-world (Dasein). Here music is detached from the different ways in which it is made into an object. At this point, we are reminded of Dufrenne’s notion of music as a ‘quasi-subject’ (Vogt 2001).
For the scientific gaze (in fig. 1), there is a hearable object (a); for the psychological gaze, there is a heard object (b); and, for the aesthetic gaze, there is a beautiful, over-he- ard object (c). In each of these moments, there is an object. And these objects deposit a subject, so there can be a correspondence between subject and object. However, in such a duality, everything is there, and nothing is missing. Everything is either heard or hearable. There is no unheard – no crack anywhere in the fabric of the universe.
The notion of the unheard is an attempt to call forth the experience of music in an ontological sense; namely, as a sensual event in the world. Thus, figure 1 – ‘the audible quadruple’ – is an attempt to connect pedagogical thinking in music with the notion of truth developed by Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology. In relation to art, this ontological notion of truth has been taken up and developed by Gadamer (Gadamer, 2006).
III. Frede Nielsen’s notion of music as a ‘multifaceted universe of musical meaning’
The figure of ‘the audible quadruple’ is an attempt to develop and reflect on the well- known model that Frede V. Nielsen presents in his book General Music Didactics from 1994.
Fig. 2. Music as a multifaceted universe of musical meaning (Nielsen, 1998: 136) As fig. 2 shows, Nielsen’s theory of the multifaceted universe of meaning is ultimately an existential category. The core level of the artwork is existential.
The audible quadruple (fig. 1) is my attempt to reflect on Nielsen’s theme using Heidegger’s (and not Husserl’s) phenomenology as a foundation. In my earlier work (Pio, 2013), I elaborated on the pedagogical consequences of such an approach.
However, my ambition in this article is to develop ’the unheard’ (cf. fig. 1) by investi- gating it as a subject-matter didactical and Bildung-theoretical category.
The dimension of the unheard – as I understand it – is implicitly present in the music philosophy developed by Nielsen. However, ‘the unheard’ also marks a pheno- menological position that can be clarified and brought out by means of a critique of Nielsen’s model of correspondence that supports his theory of the multispectral universe of meaning.
Fig. 3. Nielsen’s notion of correspondence (Nielsen, 1998: 137)
Nielsen discusses the above model of correspondence in detail in chapter 4 of his book (Nielsen, 1998: 127–163). The central phenomenological point of interest is how the layers or dimensions in the music correspond to layers in the observing subject, so that these are attuned to one another. Nielsen’s theory finds support in Dufrenne’s phenomenology of musical experience.6 Using the category of ’the unheard’, I will attempt to develop the dimension that Nielsen designates the ‘existential layer’ of musical experience (Nielsen, 1998: 136).7
However, within this analytical frame, we have to modify two elements in Nielsen’s above analysis. This regards 1) Nielsen’s layers of consciousness in the percieving subject and its theoretical correlate, 2) the Husserlian description of the mental attitude of the percieving consciousness (the transcendental Ego). These two elements are replaced by Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of being-in-the world. Therefore, Nielsen’s Husserlian ‘layers of consciousness’ as a closed, mental position is replaced
6 ”The aesthetic object has depth because it is beyond measurement. If we want to grasp it truly, we must transform ourselves. The depth of the aesthetic object is measured by the depth of the existence to which it invites us. Its depth is correlative with ours” (Dufrenne, 1973: 398, my Italics).
7 Cf. Pio & Varkøy, 2012. In this context, the music educator Christoph Schönherr has identified Heidegger as a theoretical figure in which the existential dimension is opened in the relation between music and world: “The existential character of music becomes obvious, when we encounter music … as a specific way of understanding (the world); a type of understanding in the sense of existentiality (Existenzials) found in Heidegger” (Schönherr, 2001: 155).
by a situated lifeworld marked by Heidegger’s Dasein analysis. The analytical point of departure is thus transferred from a Husserlian ‘consciousness’ to a Heideggerian ontological ‘world’.
In terms of the quality of musical experience, this amounts to a theoretical dis- placement from ‘the overheard’ to ‘the unheard’. ‘The overheard’ marks an aesthetic object perceived in the mind of an observing subject, whereas ‘the unheard’ marks the occurrence of a musical event in the world, experienced as meaningful to the extent that a notion of truth seems to justify the essence of what is occurring. In this way, one is not observing an aesthetic object, but we are drawn into the world in a diffe- rent mode; a mode in which there are no meaningful theoretical boundaries to draw between self, music, sociality, body, world. Christopher Small illustrates this dimension (the unheard) during his description of how music works as a key element in the way different communities summarize a shared attunement that installs a specific order into the world for all involved parties to share:
In the little Catalan town where I live, the procession of the town’s patron saint every August can move me to tears of joy … because it affirms, explo- res and celebrates a centuries-old community’s sense of itself and of its social order. It is not, however, a nostalgic celebration of a past order but a thoroughly contemporary affirmation of the community’s present day relationships rooted in its sense of its own history (Small, 1998: 96).
As is well known, it is Husserl’s phenomenologcal thinking that provides the theoretical background for Nielsen’s notion of music as a ‘multifaceted universe of meaning’ (cf.
Pio, 2014). Nielsen seems to adopt the paradigm of what we called the ‘over-heard’
as a mental correspondence with an aesthetic object. However, what is lacking here is a reflective move towards the paradigm of what we called ‘the unheard’ as an ontolo- gical disclosure of music as a phenomenon occuring in the opennes of a lived world.
So, in which ways could Nielsen’s theory be supplemented? I would point out that Nielsen’s mode of reflection (cf. fig. 3) remains within the logic of correspondence with a potentially world-less aesthetic object. Because of this, Nielsen’s model refrains from an ontological turn to music. As a result, Nielsen’s notion of existentiality lacks a necessary depth, since the world itself is bracketed in this aesthetic perspective.
An ontological turn towards the world seems necessary in order to posit the concrete human being in an existentiality (cf. Varkøy & Pio, 2014). As we disclose the unheard dimension of music, what do we discover? We discover the fragile human being posited in an open, existential experience of music in the world (cf. Pio, 2014). And, even though Nielsen developed the didactical paradigm of ‘existence didactics’ – which is
one of the four paradigms for the selection of teaching content (Nielsen, 2007) –, this ontological dimension is lacking in Nielsen’s model.
Nielsen’s model remains in an epistemological (Husserlian) subject-object duality and thus refrains from the disclosure of the musical phenomenon within an ontolo- gical notion of truth.8
Of course, the category of ‘existence’ is indicated in the model (of the multispectral universe of meaning in fig. 2); however, to provide this with an ontological quality, the dimension of ‘existence’ has to be removed from the subject category (on the right-hand side of fig. 3) and posited as an ontological background for the model in its totality.9
The audible quadruple as didactical grid of orientation
I would now like to suggest that the audible quadruple (fig. 1) be developed in a subject matter-didactical direction, including a Bildung-theoretical direction. In this way, the audible quadruple can offer theoretical support for a teaching-directed analysis of music pedagogical courses in general.
Thus, each of the four audibles in the quadruple (fig. 1) can be used to open up a distinctly meaningful dimension of music as a taught subject. Around each field in the audible quadruple, a distinct dimension is opened up which relates to different Bildung positions and different ways to justify music teaching. This, in turn, affects the various ways in which goals, content and forms of activity are selected.
In current music didactical thinking, methods (in relation to effectivity and lear- ning outcome) play a quite important role. I believe that, with this appraoch, there is a potential risk that pedagogy in general is drawn towards a more technical approach
8 The consequence of this is that Nielsen (in a heideggerian sense) cuts himself off from entering into contact with a deeper concept of existence. Heidegger thus develops an ontological notion of truth through the critique of a dualist, epistemological notion of truth (correspondence): “A correct and valid proposition uttered by a human subject regarding an object is not a characteristic mark (Merkmal) of truth … rather truth has to do with the disclosure (Entbergung) of that which is present (das Seiende) in a way such that an openness occurs through it. To this openness all human relations and composure are exposed (ausgesetzt).
Therefore the human is a being in the way of ex-istence (Ek-sistenz)”. (Heidegger, 1967: 190).
9 When Heidegger talks about ’existence’, he speaks the language of ‘ontology’ not ‘existentialism’ (cf.
Heidegger, 1944/46: 432f.; 437f. In his Magnum Opus Being and Time, Heidegger describes phenomeno- logically the structures of being (Existenzialien) which constitute the human being-in-the world. That which for Heidegger conditions the existence of the singular person is thus a number of ontological stru- ctures-of-being (Existenzialien, Heidegger, 1927: 44). Heidegger introduces these ’existentials’ in § 9 of Being and Time and this theme takes up the entire first section up to § 45. He later continues to describe being as a fundamentally temporal occurrence, which shapes specific epochs of history in the way the world is called forth (Seinsgeschichte).
(Gundem, 1998). In my opinion, one of the distinctive and admirable features of Nielsen’s book General music didactics is that, in its didactical thinking, it consis- tently emphasises the importance of remaining rooted into a Bildung-theoretical and philosophical foundation. The importance of this should not be underestimated. In this way, the concept of Didaktik is retained in a distinctly narrow shape, in which an appreciation of what is essential can hibernate and survive in our currently highly efficiency oriented epoch of schooling. Thus, Nielsen’s work on music-Didaktik is the musicpedagogical theory closest to my attempt to address the ontology of the unheard in music. However, as shown above, I do not accept Nielsen’s model in its entirety. To develop my perspective, I would like to suggest the following model:
Fig. 4. Process model of musicality-Bildung
Key (to the content of figure 4):
1 = Core-subject / 2 = Bildung-concept / 3 = Paradigm of music-subject justification 4 = Ways of recognizing music / 5 = Theory of knowledge / 6 = Ideal
I. The hearable (a) (det hørbare)
The hearable (a) concerns how teaching relates to a more technical outside of a given music, including an interest in acoustic and structural layers in music. In a wider sense, genre, composer, orchestration, form, context and other factual circumstances can also be involved. For instance, the upper secondary school teacher could choose to (i) work with leit motifs in a Wagner opera; (ii) explain the figuration of a four-part chorale; (iii) provide an introduction to functional harmonics, (iv) describe the recep- tion history of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. The ‘folkeskole’ teacher could introduce orchestral instruments and subsequently listen to these on recordings. Most often, the basic subject of music (often musicology) will dominate the teaching (a: 1). This means that an actual pedagogical adaption of the music teaching is predominantly absent. The science-subject of musicology constitutes in itself the guideline of the teaching. And, therefore, the factual, technical outside of the musical phenomenon becomes dominant (Nielsen, 1998: 55). There is a strong affinity here to an objectivist theory of material Bildung (a: 2).10 In connection with this, ‘the hearable’ is conne- cted to a culture-oriented justification (a: 3) of the music subject (cf. Nielsen, 2010:
54f.). A position of material Bildung prescribes that the objective content of a culture constitutes the content of teaching. Music is here an important part of the culture and thus music should be taught to recreate this part of the culture (Nolte & Kaiser, 1989: 35). However, when this teaching content has an objective character, it should be taught because ‘it is there’. Thus, an underlying justification of didactical decisions is absent. And, as the culture of music becomes increasingly complex and cultural content multiplies, this position ultimately engages in technical-material extracts of different musical genres using an exterior approach (Nielsen 1998: 58). When such an underlying reflexivity is missing, it becomes difficult to see how a teacher can involve his/her own personality in teaching.
‘The hearable’ is thus connected to a technical-material surface of music. A mode of registering becomes dominant (a: 4) in connection with music being called forth in an objective character (a: 5) as basic features of a technical surface. The ideal of
10 Material Bildung is a basic pedagogical view of teaching that exercise a focus on the subject matter content and thus a material dimension of the teaching. Bildung is considered to be the assimilation of this content – a process of absorption independent of the individual subject.
knowledge becomes correctness (a: 6) in the way knowledge is expected to correspond with the object in a correct manner. Knowledge corresponds to facts.
II. The heard (b) (det hørte)
Central themes within ‘the heard’ are subjective impressions and the importance of the pupil identifying him- or herself with the music. This is about the kind of emotions that are stirred by the music in question, which includes an interest in the pupil’s bodily response to the music; for example, the first listening encounter with a given piece of music and the pupil’s immediate response to it. The dimension of ‘the heard’
can be opened up by the teacher questioning how students experience a given piece of music. The approach is emotionally oriented in relation to the inner dimension of each pupil (b: 4). ‘The heard’ belongs to the sphere of the subject (b: 5) and its development as a human being.
’The heard’ has a strong affinity with an upbringing-oriented (b: 3) justifica- tion of music teaching. Here there is a focus on the useful effects of music and how it can influence people in general. Thus music is conceived as a means to achieve various pedagogical (i.e. non-musical) goals in relation to a process of upbringing (for instance, to enhance social competencies) (cf. Varkøy, 2012). The professional core (kernefaglighed) here is that of pedagogy (b: 1). This is connected to a mode of psychologisation that also spills over into a position of formal Bildung (b: 2) in a functional mode (se Nielsen 1998: 65f). Formal Bildung is characterised by focusing on the development of the child / human being as a unified whole (b: 6). This is often achieved at the expense of the subject matter content, which is sometimes reduced in order to achieve various general human qualities (Kräfte). A current example of this is the much-discussed transfer theme (Nielsen, 2010: 56–57) prevalent among music educators and policy makers (i.e. the question of whether music teaching can support and buttress the attainment of non-musical objectives).11
11 Rauscher & Shaw’s transfer concept (cf. Nielsen, 2004) is a way of cognitive psychology to sharpen and tighten up a scientifically buttressed position under the auspices of the philosophy of formal Bildung.
In this respect, it is important to note that transfer – as a scientific variant of formal Bildung – seems to let the pupil down in a more future directed sense. From the Moonshine Sonata of Beethoven onwards to the piano sonata of Boulez, there are hardly any transfer effects to deduce, since the historical differences in this musical material are too significant and unexpected. And this condition mirrors the human condition in general: life characterised by change. With this, it is indicated that the transfer theme is buttressed by a logic that belongs in the present tense in a systematic (i.e. non-temporal) dimension of natural science.
It does not prepare the individual person to counter and handle changes in a near or distant future (cf.
Nolte & Kaiser, 1989: 34). So this kind of scientific Bildung does not equip the pupil to deal with future situations of life. This severely diminishes the relevance of the transfer concept in relation to music (even though political edu-policy in Denmark currently exercises a significant pressure to turn the subject music into a “transfer”-subject).
This complex of ideas easily makes contact with the ideal of the individualised subject (b: 5) and the importance of formal Bildung with regards to how being human accompanies the natural right to develop and redeem all of one’s inherent human potentials. The ideal is the whole human being (b: 6). Teaching is primarily directed towards shaping the innate qualitative capacities of each individual. A given piece of music as subject matter content is only a derived means for this ambition to shape and design an on-going life process.
‘The heard’ has close ties to an ethno-didactical context (b: 2; b: 3). Ethno-didactics is based on the intention to place the pupil’s everyday experience at centre of the teacher’s selection of content. This implies the prioritising of non-academic experi- ences.12 Here the teacher ceases to dominate the selection of teaching content and thus no longer acts as the structural centre of the teaching. Rather than determining the content him- or herself, the teacher considers the pupils’ wishes and inputs; for example, in the shape of projects as student-controlled workings processes. In line with this approach, the upper-secondary music teacher uses his/her pupils’ suggestions to create easy-to-play ensemble arrangements of pieces in preparation for a spring concert. The ethno-didactical position also claims that the current culture of schooling focuses too heavily on a western, rationalist curriculum and that this excludes a multi-cultural, experiential world. Since many pupils currently inhabit multicultural environments, these children are, in a way, being forsaken by the school culture. The school must therefore respond to the musical experiences of subcultures as a reaction to the generally fragmented nature of current modern societies (in terms of values, lifestyle, musical genre, geography, etc.; cf. Nielsen, 1998: 38f).
III. The over-heard (c) (det overhørte)
The ‘overheard’ (c) is characterised by a focus on the aesthetic quality of the music to which the pupil relates. This is about the musical unity that is manifested through the technical, material elements, and it concerns the development of the work, its musical tensions, the language of tone, decisive moments in the course of the work, its compositional construction, and artistic devises. The important question here is how the specifically aesthetic character of music influences us (c:3). In the unity manifesting itself as a distinctly aesthetic object, a clear distinction between the content of the music and the listener can no longer be drawn. Frede Nielsen claims:
12 From this perspective, academic subjects are considered to be a representation of science-oriented curricula and thus an exaggerated worshipping of the syllabus.
The layers of meaning in the musical object … corresponds … to the emotional universe of the person … and this person’s entire consciousness and sensa- tion (fornemmelse). A ‘meeting’ is brought about between the two parties.
This encounter can become very intense, due to this basic correspondence between them (Nielsen, 1998: 138).
With this, an integrative professional core of a music-pedagogical kind (c: 1) comes to light, because the work with that which music is, at the same time involves a shaping work with what the child and the pupil is. The professional core of music pedagogy is constituted by this open field of relations between human beings and music, as it is opened and developed in dimensions of upbringing, Bildung and education.
The dimension of the ‘overheard’ can be brought out by the teacher by addressing questions such as:
• what kind of experiential quality corresponds to the aesthetic character of music (c: 3)?
• Which dimensions of this encounter can be incorporated into the discourse language and which dimensions of meaning escape the concept?
• What can the answers to these questions tell us about the value of music in human experience?
This level is connected to the categorical notion of Bildung (Nielsen, 1998: 78f). The two previous theories of Bildung regarding ‘the hearable’ (a) as well as ‘the heard’
(b) direct teaching towards the subject-side of the pupil (b: ‘the heard’) or towards the object-side of the musical material (a: ‘the hearable’) respectively. But how can we bring about a unity when both the subject-dimension and the object-dimension are taken into consideration?
”The categorial Bildung thinking conceives of Bildung as a unity and the process of Bildung is considered a helix of recognition (erkendelsesspiral) in hermeneutical meaning” (Varkøy, 2003: 114).
With the concept of categorial Bildung (c: 2), Klafki identifies the phenomenon of
‘double-sided opening’ (doppelseitige Erschliessung). This is a process in which a reality in the world (physical or spiritual) is opened for a person. However, during this process, the person in question is also opened. The observed phenomenon is opened at
a depth into which the observing person is also thrown.13 The approach is to observe (c: 4) so that a correspondence is brought about (c: 5) between the observer and the observed (Nielsen, 1998: 136–138). It is not difficult to incorporate this hermeneutic line of thought (stemming from general didactics) into a music-directed universe:
(a) one enters into a relation with a phenomenon (a musical performance, work or a song);
(b) this phenomenon has the potential to exercise an influence;
(c) this way of being personally affected leads to a changed relation to the musical;
phenomenon in question (there is a spectrum ranging from a non-existent or slight modification of one’s outlook to a deep existential impact);
(d) with one’s own point of departure potentially displaced (to a small or great extent), one’s interpretation of a musical phenomenon calls forth new aspects of the music in question;
(e) and this potentially affects one to a greater or lesser degree.
Thus a hermeneutical ‘helix of recognition’ is set into motion between a distinct part (a musical phenomenon) and a totality (one’s own presence in a specific horizon of meaning that conditions any understanding). This mode of recognition is given as a dualist correspondence between subject and object (c: 5) in an integrative connection.
However, as a dualist correspondence, Klafki’s categorical Bildung does not seem to redeem the full potential of the teaching of the double-sided opening (cf. Pio, 2013, section G).
‘The overheard’ belongs to an aesthetic-anthropologically based form of legitimis- ation (c: 3). This is about music’s inherent possibility to allow the human being to cultivate an inner experienced intensity or experiences of life that are non-discursive or inexpressible. Thus, an intensity of experience can be objectivised through the creation of an artistic work. In this way, by encountering the artwork in which the experience has been objectivised, it is possible for everybody to experience this aspect of lived life. Through such an artistic activity, a reservoir of basic human recognition of life itself as it has been experienced is created. Through artistic cultivation, these insights into the human condition are made available to everybody. Thus the singular human being is offered the opportunity to grow and know more. But, in a broader perspective, human cultural development is also enhanced, deepened and enriched (Nielsen, 2010: 61f.). In this way, music as an aesthetic phenomenon finds itself deeply rooted in a basic conception of what it means to be human. Thus the aesthetic legitimisation of music also becomes an anthropological type of legitimisation (c: 3).
13 However, categorical Bildung has been criticized as being too abstract, in the sense that the conception allows a space of significance to remain open that is too wide to work as an interpretive framework in teaching practice. Cf. Nolte & Kaiser, 1989: 38.
And, as such, the teaching of ‘the overheard’ contains a powerful argument as to why music should be taught as a significant and self-contained subject in school. The ideal is the beautiful (c: 6) as a significant aspect of human life.
At this point, mutual experiments between teacher and students will indicate:
• to which extent open, unpredictable and non-determined spaces can prevail and be called forth in the field of tension between (b) ‘the heard’ and (c) ‘the overheard’.
• to which extent a common consensus will be able to close down the incessant flow of meaning inherent in the song or musical performance.
We therefore need to return to the conceptual pair of conquest and reticence (cf. the horizontal axis on fig. 4 above). Since the questions above resusciates this conceptual pair. In other words:
• Conquest: to which extent will the music manifest itself in an unambiguously determined clearness in which a conquest can be brought about so that the music is called forth in a familiar confidence (World)?
• Reticence: to which extent will the music in question pull into an as yet undeci- ded withdrawal (Earth) in which zones of openness will endure and thus throw the listener back into an attuned reticence?
Under the auspices of the quadruple concerning all four audibles (fig. 1 & 4), it becomes essential to express in language what it is that gathers teachers and students around the music in question. The challenge of the audible quadruple is to make narratives that survey and move across the multispectral qualities opening up in the field of tension between the four audibles (in an open-ended processes of musicality-Bildung). Such a process will also contribute to the clarification of how a teaching course is (or can be) legitimised in relation to the broader context of education of which it is a part.
IV. The unheard (d) (det uhørte)
In a didactical context, it is obvious to indicate the affinity to that part of existen- ce-didactics that reaches into a life-world perspective (d: 3) (Nielsen, 1998: 44f;
Ferm-Thorgersen, 2010). Selection of teaching content is oriented towards the theme of human existence. This implies a relation to the world (not understood as a socio- logical society). This position is guided by a concern for the risk that the individual of modernity turns into a more or less fragmented figure. The theme of existence concerns the invariable dimensions of human life (Vetlesen, 2004: 40f.). This raises a number of questions:
• To which extent can one reasonably point towards a common ground on which we can gather? Is this at all possible in the era of individualism? Or are there only confused differences left to uncover beneath us?
• Will we ultimately find ourselves standing divided in endless disruptions or is there still a shared, communal concern? If the latter, it will be our individual responsibility to reach out for it throughout the endless pluralisms of our time?
(Nielsen, 2006a).
• In the field of tension between man and music, is it possible to account for an essential aspect of musical phenomena that offers meaning in relation to music-directed teaching and education?
• Or should we accept that any fundamental significance stirred by music in rela- tion to the human condition is today dissolved into a confused mess of individu- alised constructions?
• Is music a supporting “transfer” subject legitimised primarily by developing the pupils’ motor functions as well as their social competencies, or is it possible to disclose an identity of this school subject on a deeper level, i.e. a level which leads us to address the core of the musical phenomenon as it is and how we find it to be.
An example of such a position (heeding the un-heard) could be the upper-secon- dary music teacher giving a presentation on strong and intense musical experiences (Gabrielsson, 2011). This acts as an introduction to the theme ‘what does music matter to us?’. The discussion could be concluded by asking the pupil to select and present a piece of music in which this theme comes alive and to accompany this piece with a short written reflection or motivation.
In the d: 5 category ‘clearing’ (cf. fig. 4), ‘the unheard’ signifies a suspension of the subject-object dichotomy. Thus, in d: 5, one sees a movement from a ‘subject-object’
mode (c: 5) in (c) ‘the over-heard’ towards the ‘disclosure’ (d: 4) of a ‘clearing’ (d: 5) in (d) ‘the unheard’. Thus, in general, the process model of musicality-Bildung (fig. 4) outlines a process that gradually elapses away from a dualist subject-object perspe- ctive. This relates to the different types of Bildung (a: 2; b: 2; c: 2; d: 2):
(a) ‘The hearable’ (object-directed material Bildung) (b) ‘The heard’ (subject-directed formal Bildung)
(c) ‘The over-heard’ (the softening of the duality in categorical Bildung14)
14 Cf. Klafki’s teaching of the ‘double sided opening’.
(d) ‘The unheard’ (ontological non-duality buttressed by phenomenological concepts of clearing15 (d: 5) and Besinnung16 (d: 2)).
As I have argued elsewhere,17 Heidegger’s Besinnung (Heidegger, 1956: 12) constitutes a thinking in which the double-sided opening of categorical Bildung is accomplished through a determination of Besinnung as the solidarity between human beings and being:
“ … [we] compose ourselves (besinnen uns) as to a belonging that concerns man and being” (Heidegger, 1957b: 17).
In relation to teaching interaction, the unheard (d) encircles the potentiality of sudden, momentary jerks into non-rule-governed, open spaces – spaces in which pedagogy, music, together with interactions between students and teachers can flow together into shared, indistinguishable zones that cannot be broken down into separate elements.
This is about the phenomenological concept of Mitsein, (being-together, being-with) which I have expounded elsewhere (Pio, 2013: 196ff).
The way of recognising the world (a: 4: b: 4; c: 4 d: 4) has been determined above in ‘the audible quadruple’ (fig. 4) respectively as:
(a) To register (‘the hearable’) (b) To feel (‘the heard’)
(c) To observe (‘the over-heard’)
Under the auspices of (d) ‘the unheard’, the mode in which the world is recognised reaches a non-dualist form of disclosure (d: 4):
(d) To disclose (‘the unheard’)
• With this, the professional core (c: 1; d: 1) is modified in a way that displaces the positions of:
• ‘Music-pedagogy’ (rooted in aesthetics and Bildung theory); cf. (c) ‘the overheard’.
• ‘Musicpedagogy’ (ontology of music); cf. (d) ‘the unheard’.
15 Jf. Pio, 2013: 201f.; 283f.
16 Op. cit. 294f.
17 Op. cit. 280f.
In Pio & Varkøy (2012), we reflected on the potentiality of disclosing (the un-heard dimension of) music as a prism that works to summarise an attuned presence in the world. This is an existential perspective that has received relatively little attention from music teachers (Varkøy, 2010: 25f).
V. Musicality-Bildung
As previously mentioned, the above process model (fig. 4) of musicality-Bildung refers directly to a number of music-didactical categories described by Nielsen on a phenomenological level. However, this process model develops Nielsen’s descriptive approach by presenting a normative, prescriptive position.
My discussion of the four audibilities is normative in the sense that it identifies a starting point: (a) ‘the hearable’. And, from here, the process leads towards an increasingly deep way of disclosing the phenomenon of music, moving through (b), (c) and finally (d). When (d) connects to (a), an eternal circle is created. This is a hermeneutical process (Gadamer). Moving from (a) to (d) in an eternal circle is a process of musicality-Bildung. One may think that musicality-Bildung is a rather strange word (a combination of Anglo-Saxon and German), but I believe this word accurately describes the process’ characteristics. Although originally developed within music pedagogical thinking, the fourfold concept structure of ‘The audible quadruple’
has recently been utilised by professor Finn Thorbjørn Hansen within the pedagogy of supervision (Hansen, 2010: 111).
The practice that wields the audible quadruple is called musicality-Bildung. But what exactly is this? In Heideggers Dasein analysis, the self is not a psychological category and the world is not a sociological category. This implies that Musicality- Bildung is not a social-psychological category. We do not say musicality + Bildung in a vulgar sense. With Merleau-Ponty, we wish to point out a chiasmus. We wish to unfold the musicality of Bildung as well as a Bildung of musicality. This proces of musicality-Bildung is described in fig. 4 with regard to these pedagogical categories:
1 = Core subject 2 = Bildung concept
3 = Paradigm of music-subject justification 4 = Ways of recognising music
5 = Theory of knowledge 6 = Ideal
Many of these categories have been described by Frede Nielsen (parameter 1–3, 5). However, my contribution and aim has been to disclose and clarify the entire fourth field (d). As I have tried to show, this field is often not explicitly present in musicpedagogical theory inspired by phenomenology. This is often (as was the case with Nielsen) due to a recourse to a specific Husserlian theoretical (epistemological) variant of phenomenology.18
Thus musicality-Bildung is the music pedagogical process working in the field of possibility opened up in the relations between the four audibilities from fig. 4. I think that this notion of musicality-Bildung can provide a phenomenological answer to the questions that Bildung-thinking is currently asking musicpedagogy today.19
In other classical texts of phenomenology, there is ample evidence to support the relevance of Heidegger’s thinking in an arts education context. In accordance with such a perspective a broader composure (Besinnung; cf. d: 2) on the didactical para- meters of (d) ‘the unheard’ (cf. fig 4) is yet to be unfolded. The starting point of such thinking could be practice-near narratives that chart concrete experiences of how the subject-object divide of musical experience arrives in indistinguishable grey zones of non-duality.20 Most of us will be familiar with this quality of experience from numerous insignificant life situations involving music. But how can we uncover and recover this structural quality in a space of teaching and thus make sense of the world? This line of questioning is fuelled by Dufrenne as he describes how the artwork addresses:
” … my body without eliciting, through some representation, an act of intel- ligence other than that of the body. It is thus that we are in the world – by forming a subject-object totality in which the subject and the object are not yet distinguishable” (Dufrenne, 1973: 339, cursive fp).
According to Merleau-Ponty (regarding visual art), an “incessant birth” is taking place:
What one calls inspiration, should be taken literally, because it is really a process of inhaling and exhaling (inspiration et expiration), of being taking place. In this respiration one finds an activity (conquest, fp) and passivity (reticence, fp) so inseparable, that one no longer knows who is seeing and
18 I will address this in the special issue of PMER (edited by Estelle Jorgensson), which will be presented in Nielsen’s honour in Autumn 2014 or Spring 2015.
19 Musicality-Bildung is not a position, but rather a movable conception. The accent of process is somet- hing that is unfolded in a field of possibilities. This makes the process of musicality-Bildung dependant on the concrete context in which it is applied.
20 In relation to the artwork Dufrenne discusses: ” … the danger posed to it by representation” (Dufrenne, 1973: 313, cursive fp).
who is seen, who is painting and who is being painted (Merleau-Ponty, 1961: 26).
We repeatedly discover that the world is awake in us and this recognition is stirred by our encounter with music and art. This is potentially an ontological experience – a clearing (fig. 4; d: 5). Through the movement of art, the world catches sight of itself. Who knows? Perhaps this is why Merleau-Ponty considered art as that which:
” … contributes to encircle the path on which we reach into being” (Merleau- Ponty, 1961: 32)?21
21 My above interpretation of ‘the audible quadruple’ has an affinity to Even Ruud who has differenti- ated between four levels of understanding in the relation between (wo)man and music. This concerns a movement from: ‘the materiality of sound’ (body) => ‘the structure of music’ (language) => ‘semantics of music’ (meaning) => ‘music as activity’ (sociality), (Ruud, 2001: 125–133). More specifically these four levels have been generalized and clarified by Lars Ole Bonde in his four part model (inspired by readings of Ruud as well as John Sloboda). Bonde suggests this reworking of Ruud: (i) Physiological (material sound matter), (ii) Syntactical-aesthetic (music as language and aesthetical medium, (iii) Semantic (the individually heard meaning and understanding of music), (iv) Pragmatic (the function of music in social contexts), cf.
Bonde, 2009: 30. There is certainly a resemblance between the Bonde/Ruud model and my own ‘audible quadruple’ (fig. 1). But besides the difference in sequence from level (ii) => (iii) (in Bonde) compared to (c) => (d) (in Pio) the important difference however between the two models concerns the determination of the fourth field (‘the unheard’ (d) in Pio compared to (iv) ‘the Pragmatic’ in Bonde). Here Heidegger’s ontology is lost in the Bonde/Ruud model. Symptomatically there is also a tendency in the Bonde-reading of Ruud that the existential dimension becomes deposited within (iii) ‘the semantic’ dimension of mental language-meaning (and not in the hermeneutical-phenomenological interpretation of the world), cf. Bonde, 2009: 127, 149, 163, 177. Ultimately the world is thus (pragmatically) reduced to a social construction.
So, the two models (Bonde/Ruud compared to Pio) still end up in two quite different views. To clarify this difference I will make two claims (within the ontological logic of ‘the audible quadruple’).
Claim I): The organizing of sound and the phenomenon of meaning are to sides of the same coin. Music as intentionally structured sound is always (in the audible quadruple) heard. I.e. in the musical experience structured musical syntax is always-already pregnant with meaning (semantic).
Claim II): Structured sound is a necessary – but not sufficient – condition for the constitution of an aest- hetic phenomenon (because not all music can have aesthetic quality!). This suggests that the aesthetical dimension should be derived from the semantic dimension as something that succeeds the semantic into a potential artistic superstructure. Accordingly the aesthetical dimension should not (in my view) be stated previous to the semantic dimension as in Bonde’s model. These two claims (I and II) lead to the following suggestion to how the Bonde/Ruud model could be reworked in an ontological illumination:
(i) Physiological (the hearable), (ii) Syntactical-semantic (the heard), (iii) Aesthetical (the over-heard), (iv) Ontological (the unheard of).
But the mainstay in the ’the audible quadruble’ (fig. 1) is Ruud and Bonde’s important insight into how musical experience emerge in the complex interplay (of musicality-Bildung) between bodily aspects, musical meaning-structure, aesthetical-artistic intensities, and world.
References
Alt, M. (1968). Didaktik der Musik. Düsseldorf: Schwann.
Antorini, C. (2013). Aftale mellem regeringen Venstre og Dansk Folkeparti om et fagligt løft af folkeskolen. Af 7. juni 2013.
Arendt, H. (1971). The life of the mind (part 2: Willing), pp. 172ff. Harvest: London.
Bonde, L. O. (2009) Musik og menneske. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.
Dufrenne, M. (1973). The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (PAE). Evanston:
Northwestern U.P. 1989.
Ferm Thorgersen, C. (2010). Ömsesidig nyfikenhet och respect – fenomenologisk didaktik. In F. V. Nielsen, & S.-E. Holgersen, et al. (Eds.) Nordic research in music education yearbook (pp. 167–184). Oslo: NMH-publikasjoner 2009:8.
Gabrielsson, A. (2011). Strong Experiences with Music. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1983). Heideggers Wege. Tübingen: Mohr.
Gadamer, H.-G. (2006). Artworks in word and image. ‘So true, so full of being!
(Goethe)’ (1992). Theory, Culture & Society, 23(1), 57–83.
Gundem, B. B. (1998). Skolens opgave og innhold. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Hansen, F. T. (2010). Filosofisk vejledning og praktisk kundskab i professionsuddan- nelser. DPU Aarhus universitet.
Heidegger, M. (1927). Sein und Zeit (Vol I, pp. 1–230). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 2001.
Heidegger, M. (1944/46). Existenz. In: Nietzsche II (kapitel IX, pp. 432–439).
Stuttgart: Verlag Günther Neske 1961 (1998).
Heidegger, M. (1944). Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann 1996.
Heidegger, M. (1950). Holzwege. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann 2003.
Heidegger, M. (1954). Was heisst Denken?. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 1997.
Heidegger, M. (1956). Was ist das – die Philosophie. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2003.
Heidegger, M. (1957). Der Satz vom Grund. Stuttgart: Stuttgart:Verlag Günther Neske 1997.
Heidegger, M. (1957b). Identität und Differenz. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2002.
Heidegger, M. (1967). Wegmarken. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann 1996.
Heidegger, M. (1983). Winke. In: Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (pp. 23–34).
Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermanns 2002 (GA 13).
Holst, F. (2013) Professionel musiklærerpraksis. Professionsviden og lærerkompe- tence med særlig henblik på musikundervisning i grundskole og musikskole. IUP:
AU.
Kaiser, H. J. & Nolte, E. (1989). Musikdidaktik. Mainz: Schott.
